Early Childhood (and K-12)
Professional Development
For Educators & Programs
Book Your Training Now!
The Down To Earth Dad® professional-development trainings are for early childhood and K-12 schools, organizations, and programs across America’s school districts, American Indian tribes, and educational service areas.
Choose a father engagement theme and/or staff stress reduction in support of work-life balance, or celebrate staff story sharing to build bonds and support early literacy, school readiness, and parent engagement program-wide.
Always entertaining and interactive, these trainings contain immediately-useful information your team can use to optimize cognitive, social, and emotional development.
Chances are VERY good your team will say afterward this was the most FUN (and interactive) training they ever attended!
These high-quality professional-development trainings—offered year-round and as conference breakout sessions—leave a lasting, positive impact on both new and seasoned staff, supporting enduring benefits for the children and families they serve.
Local programs host these trainings in their gym, lunchroom, conference room, auditorium, or other local meeting space/venue such as a church or event center.
DAD / MALE ENGAGEMENT TRAINING:
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- Learn *exactly* how to talk to men so they’ll listen.
- Learn how to listen to men so they’ll talk (click link at left).
- Celebrate maternal and paternal parenting styles
- Learn tried, tested, and perfected techniques to get (and keep) men optimally engaged.
- Be motivated and entertained by the trainer, by cool audio-visuals, and by each other!
- Learn how to motivate your dads’ employers to support father engagement.
- Share individual and small-group visions for enhanced father engagement, and set goals for positive outcomes all year long.
- Bond closer as a team.
- Have fun!
Do you have Home Visitors (a.k.a. Early Learning Partners) on your team? They’ll benefit HUGELY from this training because home visits (and intake/screenings) are perfect times to “raise the bar” for fathers and show how your program values engaged dads for so many reasons.
STORY-SHARING FOR EDUCATORS:
Instead of relying solely on manufactured stories for early-literacy enhancement, early childhood educators can weave in their own personal narratives to boost literacy—and share individual, family, and community history/heritage/culture along the way!
Patrick will show your team *exactly* how to leverage the power of personal storytelling to enliven educator/parent interactions around literacy and to bolster cognitive, social, and emotional development and school readiness.
Book a Storytelling for ECE: Strengthening Child Resilience with Educator Narratives staff training or keynote address to empower your team and turbo-charge parent engagement, strengthen families, enhance child literacy, teach resilience, facilitate social connections, boost social-emotional competence, and reduce child stress. True story!
Storytelling Benefits Reach Beyond Early Childhood. Research shows that children who learn the art of story sharing from their parents—who, in turn, gain these skills from you (or from me during my Family Storytelling Night events)—grow into notably resilient adolescents able to more successfully navigate stressors!
(You can host a Family Storytelling Night® the evening prior to your professional development training—it’s a great one-two punch of value and FUN! (In-Kind sometimes available for a second event.)
STAFF STRESS-REDUCTION TRAINING:
The Office of Head Start (OHS) published a memorandum supporting staff wellness, well-being, and mental health for all staff in the Head Start workforce. This training fits the bill par excellence!
Staff wellness & well-being is VITAL to child well-being, so it’s CRUCIAL to optimize your team’s interactions with children and families by reducing their stress.
The Stress Reduction event is an interactive and entertaining
journey exploring seven threads, or topics, rolled out consecutively and interlocking and with small-and-all-group activities along the way.
Comical and meaningful Audio-visuals. Participatory by nature, but
some people may choose not to participate openly, and that’s okay.
- Acknowledging Stressors Across Job Titles and Away from Work.
- Eliminating—PERMANENTLY—all the Stressors You Can.
- Harnessing Remaining Stressors to Your ADVANTAGE!
- Learning Strategies for COPING with Stressors.
- Stress Reduction in Other Cultures.
- Supporting Each Other.
- Story Sharing as a Tool to Reduce Staff Stress and as a Research-Based Method of Ameliorating Youth Stress.
Lastly: Colorful Vision Boards, a small-group or individual make-and-take project to celebrate newfound insights!
NOTE: There are many topics available for your Staff PD Training with Patrick Mitchell. Let’s customize what works best for your team.
See some of Patrick’s recent and upcoming events.
FOUR Training Delivery OPTIONS!
Pick the training format that best fits your team, and let’s PLAN. (Click link below to see options.)
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